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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

Nah, Moloch loves the "authentic" humans, because they can be bullshitted into doing anything. Yes, they'll resist any direct attempts at telling them how to live their lives - but they'll do that as much to a tyrant, as to their democratic representatives, or their own community. Inertia is not a virtue - neither for an object, nor for a human.

The way against "authentic" humans' resistance/reactance is something Moloch figured out long ago: take it slow, manipulate their beliefs about themselves and the world. This even scales better than tyranny. Marketers and advertisers know and use this. Politicians and activists and religious leaders know and use this. "Authentic" humans will follow their intuition off a cliff if you make them believe it'll make them feel safe, or fulfill their lust. Easy when you're also responsible for instilling fear and/or desire in them in the first place.

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>Inertia is not a virtue - neither for an object, nor for a human.

What Dick describes is the opposite of inertia.

It takes internal resolve (and force) to stand against all the forces pressuring them to do the wrong thing. Inertia would instead just go with the flow of power -- the path of least resistance that's more comfortamble.

>The way against "authentic" humans' resistance/reactance is something Moloch figured out long ago: take it slow, manipulate their beliefs about themselves and the world

History has shown that the worst culprits are not the "authentic humans" but the self-assured smart-asses. The masses might go for this or that BS ocassionally, but it's the "supermen" that promote it and set the terms.

> Inertia would instead just go with the flow of power

No, inertia is specifically the characteristic of matter to continue in its current state, not the characteristic of not pushing back against another force.

If a stationary object is suddenly pushed by a force, inertia is the property that resists moving.

>No, inertia is specifically the characteristic of matter to continue in its current state, not the characteristic of not pushing back against another force.

In any case, we're not going for physics here, but for parable. After all inertia is not Dick's word for this, it's the [thread's] parent's.

Dick's point is: ordinary people are often the real heroes, not asking to the recognition as heroes nor through doing conventional heroic acts, but through resisting doing a bad thing they're asked to do, when it would be easier to just comply and follow the flow (where the flow is the society/order/army/historical flow towards some bad path).

The "self-assured smart-asses" are often those loudly proclaiming their authenticity. That doesn't make it so, but it can blur the lines.

Then again what IS "authenticity"? It depends on your values. It really teeters on the fact that we all deep down share some common goal. Extend all human life? Increase all human happiness? Or maybe just increase my groups happiness? Or just increase my own? "Authenticity" is a buzzword that is more akin to "consistency". You don't flip flop between various values. But then there's the meta-flip flopping of values. Is your MAIN value the ability to BE flexible? That's you're main value and in pursuit of that, you flip flop between many different values as time goes on. To most, you'd appear as in-authentic. To yourself, you'd appear like you're following the same straight and narrow path you always have because you're considering the higher level value you're pursuing.

I'd say that authenticity is actually independent of values (maybe you're saying that too).

A problem is that one could be an authentic mass murderer.

Bare authenticity alone is insufficient for moral good.

Indeed it may not even be necessary by some moral theories.

But, in saying I value authenticity, I am not claiming to be moral or right.

I could very well be horribly wrong in everything I think about technology - a monstrous throwback holding humanity from blessed Utopia. Time will tell. Meanwhile "authenticity" remains a value I aspire to.

This is a good point, attaching a moral valence to being 'authentic' simply doesn't make much sense.

There probably are cases where becoming more 'authentic' is worse and should be discouraged by all means.

Ah, but the Authentic Human knows that the Moloch knows that....

all the way down....

Unfortunately, most humans don't seem to have a good idea of how feedback loops work, they get stuck focusing on a single leg of them "they hurt me, I must get my revenge" instead of noticing the other leg and self-reinforcing nature of the phenomenon "I get my revenge, they feel hurt and now hurt me to get their revenge, ad infinitum".

And Moloch is a personification of a large system of feedback loops.

That's to say - most humans - and therefore, most "authentic" humans - have trouble recognizing Moloch is a thing in the first place.

(FWIW, I don't think it's an issue of capabilities, but rather, of education. Some basics of feedback control should be covered in elementary education, instead of specialized university degrees.)

It's a good take, and I appreciate that depth of thought.

One reason we teach Meadows as one component of intellectual self-defence.

https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=19

But you're right, the ability to see how a great network of systems and subsystems, all trying to make things better, can add up to a lethal "trap" with its own perverse intelligence (I quite like the Adam Curtis slant) is elusive.

> Inertia is not a virtue - neither for an object, nor for a human

because inertia is unavoidable. a fact of nature, it's useless to try to judge it as good or bad; however we all do this. and after trying to do this, we all eventually learn that inertia is unrelated to virtue and that everything will be affected by inertia

is this good? or bad? is this a virtue? or a vice? good for subjects? bad for objects?

the answer is no all the way until one realizes that it doesn't matter. it'll still be inertia

I find the worst actors to be the ones that try and fill with you with so much cynicism and mistrust that the "authentic humans" feel debased and consequently second-guess themselves.

Absolutely this!

It's a fascinating and disturbing phenomenon. FWIW, here's a discussion/interview I had with a psychologist [0] about why, for exmaple, some people will say "Privacy is dead. Give up hope. There's nothing you can do..." yada yada...

And the less they know about the subject technically, the more insistent and outspoken they are on the matter. It's bugged me for ages what's behind this, because there's more than Dunning-Kruger going on.

She names a possible root as "conflict avoidance".

The most vocal denouncers are in fact the most frightened. What they don't want to face is that they might have to do something, because that could be dangerous in their minds.

[0] https://cybershow.uk/media/episodes/ogg/ownership-technology...

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